PARTNERSHIPS - LLI Status Report 2008
Partnerships
Across the landbase of the Foothills Model Forest, the Alberta Government, industry, and Parks Canada exercise varying management strategies in response to their respective priorities. Despite different strategies, all Foothills Model Forest partners agree on a wide range of priorities and goals.
The Foothills Model Forest’s ability to build cooperative partnerships has been especially important in developing agreement on goals and indicators for this project. Working with a multi-jurisdictional group of partners requires innovation and risk, but it’s definitely a risk worth taking. Being able to refer to common goals and indicators is good news for ecological and social environments, as well as being cost-effective. The Local Level Indicators Project has drawn on a partnership consisting of over 40 organizations, principal sponsors, the Foothills Model Forest Board of Directors, and the Executive Committee.
The Data
The Foothills Model Forest Activity Team has assembled scientific data to allow for the evaluation of selected indicators. The intent of the Local Level Indicator Project is to report on the results of continued monitoring, in an attempt to reflect the current state of specific attributes of the forest and the maintenance of values over time. The preparation of some of the indicator reports clearly illustrated some of the challenges of acquiring the right data to answer indicator-specific questions.
In these instances, reporting on the indicator was deferred until such time as the dataset was either complete or deemed of acceptable quality, or until enough time had passed for the dataset to reflect a meaningful change since the 2003 report (commensurate with the sensitivity of the indicator). As the deferred indicators are populated, they will be added to this website.
We now invite you to examine the goals of sustainable forest management (Table 1), as shared by the Foothills Model Forest partners within the context of the six national criteria link. Table 1 provides a matrix of the national CCFM criteria, Model Forest goals (critical elements), a statement of shared value, the meaning of the value, and the indicator by which we propose to evaluate the attainment of each goal and value.